


Second Nature

by tripwirealarm



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3325331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripwirealarm/pseuds/tripwirealarm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"By the time she catches up, she’s forgotten where she started. Maybe it’s just the boredom, and as her mother dryly reminds her, being angry has always been Donna’s favorite hobby."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Nature

She wakes sometimes, at night, thinking she’s heard one of the children.  Ella crying after a nightmare. Josh calling for a drink of water.

She’s one-two steps out of bed before she remembers: she doesn’t have children.

Shaun's often laughed at her absent mindedness. More than once, in a rush, she’s signed her name--on a rent cheque, on a card slip at a shop--as something she’s never even heard before: Donna McAvoy. It comes to her hand second-nature, muscle memory. Like she’s written it this way for years. Like she doesn't even have to think about it.

It’s from a daytime soap, that’s what she tells Shaun. He thinks nothing of it, and after awhile, she’s convinced too. She considers, but ultimately forgoes mentioning it to her mother, who’s only ever half-listening on the best days, and on the worst days is too absorbed with visits to the mausoleum to leave flowers on her late-husband’s crypt, plastic ones, since fresh-cut aren’t allowed. Sylvia calls it a travesty; Donna isn’t sure. Something, she supposes, is always better than nothing, even if that something is plastic forget-me-nots that look like they were made by someone who’d never once seen the real thing.

Because something is better than nothing the way death isn't better than mundanity. She doesn't know why she has to remind herself of that, but it’s like a fly buzzing in her head, that thought. Like something leftover from a dream, the tail end of something important she was supposed to remember but lost among the windstorm in her head, coffee receipts and reality telly and fashion magazines with articles that continue sixty pages further in, between ads for mascara and perfume, paper-thin women with exaggerated features and brightly painted mouths, barely human in a way that makes Donna feel turned upside down. Like looking into a mirror and seeing the wrong face.

Then, like a shock of sudden bird flight or a pile of leaves hit with a gust of wind, whatever she was thinking, just like that it’s somewhere else. Continued on page 57. Less like something forgotten and more like something misplaced. Something lost between sofa cushions. Something nailed under floorboards.

It’s unrelated, but she’s developed phobias, if they could be called that. Aversions, more like. An aversion to in-car navigation systems, the entire Leeds area, and all manner of insects. Wasps and stag beetles, spiders and especially bees--though none of them bothered her until what seems recently. There’s a special kind of anger that sparks in her when a long late night telly advert for diet pills boasts women with ab muscles they could cut themselves on, tan and trim in bikinis after 40 weeks. It’s all a scam, she tells Shaun, curling her lip. She’d rather run on a treadmill. He kisses her and says only if she wants. A minute later, she forgets what had upset her in the first place.

That’s how it always feels. Anger or fear, profound sadness that blossoms from thin air, then everything’s moved forward without her, like a skipping record. Like she’s blinked and missed something again. Article continued on page 63. By the time she catches up, she’s forgotten where she started. Maybe it’s just the boredom, and as her mother dryly reminds her, being angry has always been Donna’s favorite hobby.

To distract herself, she’s writing a book. The drudge work as a temp isn’t needed to keep the rent paid--lottery winnings in triple rollover, a lump sum of three hundred million pounds after taxes--so she’s putting those hundred words a minute to work. It’s a story that started out about London socialites, diamonds and champagne and intrigue, but it ends up on its ear, a chase through the galaxy between stars. It’s about a woman far from home and a grinning man with sad eyes who is in love with a ghost. She doesn't know where it all came from; where does anything come from? She asks her Grandad if he wants to give it a read and of course he does. Ten pages in, he tells her it reminds him of Agatha Christie in space, and for whatever reason, her face drops into her hands and she cries.

Gripped, embarrassingly, with great gasping sobs, her shoulders draw up on a long breath, then drop in jerks. Grandad is speechless, hands fluttering like nervous birds. Shaun assures her he’d meant it as a compliment, and through tears, she demurs that she knows. She knows, it’s hormones, she says, the baby’s due in a month after all. He kisses her head and makes her a tea.

They name the baby Ella, because Donna insists. She doesn't tell Shaun why, but her daughter, she couldn’t have any other name.

It’s three years before Josh comes along, and while Donna no longer wakes hearing phantom cries, instead in the night it’s the stray, unwanted thought that everything: Shaun, the children, the lottery money, they're like plastic flowers on her father’s grave.

They all come so close to perfect, and they could fool you--but only if you’d never seen the real thing.


End file.
